one more saturday night

I have yet another bottle spirited onto my check-in in my fridge.  This one's a lager, so a nice laid-back kind of beer for a rainy evening I expect.  There's a stout waiting, but with any luck it will be chilly next week.  Probably not, though.  This Ostroff is a half-dark lager, made by Falkenštejn in collaboration with Hotel Ostrov in "Bohemian Switzerland".  It's a fairly standard sounding beer, not quite 5%, so a nice thing to have after an afternoon of hiking around mountains and woods.

Very slightly sweet aroma, a little bit sour in there too.  Mostly, it's lager smell.  Fluffy head, dies back pretty quickly, but keeps a little fuzzy cap over the top.  Although the beer is unfiltered the color is clear, with no cloudiness at all, and a warm coppery dark gold.  The taste hits with sour first, but a toasty graininess comes up from the depths.  It seems like there's some bittersweet in the background also, but they're fighting it out to see who gets to be noticed.  The bitter starts to gain ground after about half the glass.  Towards the end, though, the beer gains some weight and dials up the sweet.  It becomes more like a typical central European lager in flavor, with a touch of that grassiness, although the sour never goes away completely.  Not an especially demanding beer, could be very nice for an evening drink, all-day hike or not.

memories

Ugh!  Somehow my first Saturday back and I wasn't prepared for my special beer!  Other organzing left me with no camera, and I don't think it's the same posting with no pictures.  You wanna see that label, right?  Anyway!

I brought a little of my August with me, braving the airplane ride swaddled in laundry.  It tends to work alright.  I tend to end trips with a lot of laundry.  From the good Beer Geek I purchased several, this one being a nice, light NEIPA with a kind of heavy name: 5$ Milkshake IPA.  (That currency sign placement...sigh)  Although the name Chroust Brewing looks familiar, I don't think I ended up sampling any of their products.  It must be high time to do so, then.

Guess it's the skates that make it five bucks

There's a refreshing, fruity scent right away upon opening it up, not quite as citrusy as most craft IPAs, but along the lines of what NEIPA is shaping up to be.  The head starts out white and abundant but settles right down into a thin foam just covering the top of the beer.  The beer itself is cloudy, a kind of rosy orange color, I say more grapefruit than milkshake there.  There's a quick blast of grapefruit flavor in fact, but it melts away into a more generalized bitter, but a soft edged sort of taste.  It does feel a little insulated, like some ice cream had been melted into it (beer floats, where have you gone??), keeping the sharpness of the ale wrapped in a very palatable blanket.  Let it stand for a while and a sweet taste does develop over the top, perhaps with a touch of vanilla to it.  It has the juiciness of a good NEIPA for sure, a solidly fruity flavor overall.  Still, it's not lacking in beer bitter, providing a good balance of tastes, and is no featherweight.  It feels substantial in the mouth without being sticky or overbearing.  Quite a good candidate for any time of year, interesting enough on its own, but not so complex as to be distracting.  Ah, it's good to be home...